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Masterworks 3: Folklore Fantasy · March 19, 2022
Dig into Scandinavian and Slavic roots with a program that brings folklore to life, featuring mythical birds, epic poetry that inspired a nation, and Tchaikovsky’s self-made legend: his rugged Violin Concerto that leaves the violin “black and blue.” MASTERWORKS 3 Thomas Wolfe Auditorium Saturday, March 19, 2022, 8:00 p.m.
Darko Butorac, Conductor William Hagen, Violin
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From Lemminkäinen Suite, Op. 22 (Four Legends from Kalevala), I. Lemminkäinen and the Maidens of Saari
Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)
Jean Sibelius composed the four tone poems for a concert of his music in 1896, initially naming them “Symphonic Poems on Motifs from the Lemminkäinen Myth.” Lemminkäinen is a composite of several heroic figures from Kalevala, an eighteenth-century compendium of Finnish oral epic poems, and the four tone poems were not intended as a cohesive narrative. Rather, they allude to Lemminkäinen’s various adventures. The music corresponds to Sibelius customary style of presenting musical ideas as short motives, avoiding true themes and often leaving them harmonically unresolved.
Enthusiastically received at the first performance, at a repeat a year later Helsinki’s leading critic wrote: “This sort of music seems purely pathological.”
In Lemminkäinen and the Maidens of the Island, the youthful Lemminkäinen, “fair of cheek, comely beneath his brow” combines the prototypical heroic qualities of warlord and lover. The music does not follow the narrative, nor are the specific themes identifying the characters or incidents. In typical Sibelius fashion, the composer presents a collection of brief motivic elements, suggesting the overall mood. After a long melancholy introduction, the music accordingly toggles among a light-footed dance, romantic yearning and ominous foreshadowing. Fed up with Lemminkäinen’s lascivious behavior, the men of the island chase him away.
Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)
“Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto raises for the first time the ghastly idea that there are pieces of music that one can hear stinking... [the finale] transports us into the brutish grim jollity of a Russian church festival. In our mind’s eye we see nothing but common, ravaged faces, hear rough oaths and smell cheap liquor.” This politically incorrect assessment comes from the pen of the dean of nineteenth century music critics, Eduard Hanslick, reviewing the Concerto’s Vienna premiere.
Why did the first performance take place in Vienna and not St. Petersburg? It is difficult to believe that this Concerto, probably the most popular in the literature, was declared to contain passages that were “almost impossible to play” by its first dedicatee, the famed violinist and violin teacher Leopold Auer, concertmaster of the Imperial Orchestra in St. Petersburg. Completed in 1878, it had to wait for three years for its premiere in Vienna where Hanslick was not alone in his opinion.
What Hanslick and the other critics disliked most is what makes the Concerto so appealing today: its athletic energy, unabashed romanticism and rousing Slavic finale. Without diminishing our own enjoyment of the Concerto, attempting to hear it with the ears of its first audience is a fascinating exercise in cultural relativity. First of all, consider the sheer difficulty of the piece. What defeated Russia’s leading violin virtuoso is the stuff teenage prodigies cut their teeth on at Juilliard and Curtis, practicing the killer bits ad nauseam until they get it right or find some other career.
Then there’s the fact that there was no love lost between the two great nineteenth-century imperial behemoths, Russia and AustriaHungary, who continued to slug it out until the end of World War I. That Tchaikovsky disliked Johannes Brahms, Hanslick’s favorite composer, probably also added fuel to the fire.
At the time of the Concerto’s inception, Tchaikovsky was just emerging from under the black cloud of a disastrous marriage to an emotionally unstable woman who had threatened
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William Hagen, Violin
I. Allegro moderato II. Canzonetta: Andante III. Finale: Allegro vivacissimo
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INTERMISSION
Jean Sibelius Lemminkäinen Suite, Op. 22
II. The Swan of Tuonela
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Igor Stravinsky Suite from The Firebird (1919)
1. Introduction 2. L’Oiseau de feu et sa danse & Variation de l’oiseau de feu 3. Ronde des princesses 4. Danse infernale du roi Kastcheï 5. Berceuse 6. Final
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This performance will be recorded for broadcast on Blue Ridge Public Radio on April 5, 2022 at 7:00 p.m. and April 7, 2022 at 9:00 a.m.
suicide if he refused to marry. The marriage was also undertaken to quash rumors about his homosexuality; it ended two weeks later with his attempted suicide, although they were never legally divorced. The vibrant energy of the Concerto, however, seems to have been inspired by the visit of Josif Kotek, a young violinist, pupil and protégé who managed to raise the composer’s spirits. He helped him with the Concerto, giving advice on technical matters.
The Concerto opens with a brief, gentle introduction, paving the way for the lyrical first theme. After some virtuosic fireworks, the emerging second theme is surprisingly similar in mood to the first. The development, full of technical acrobatics, leads into the very difficult cadenza that the composer wrote himself.
The current slow movement was Tchaikovsky’s second try; he discarded his first attempt, eventually publishing it separately as a violin and piano piece, Méditation, Op. 42, No. 3. The second version opens with a gentle melancholy song on the woodwinds that pervades the movement, serving as sharp contrast to the raucous Finale that follows without pause. Hanslick’s appraisal: “The adagio with its gentle Slav melancholy [note the stereotyping] is well on its way to reconciling us and winning us over.”
The unabashed use of Russian peasant dance rhythms in the third movement that so upset Vienna’s critics was, even at the time, becoming a signature of much Russian orchestral music and a symbol of Russian nationalism. Another peculiar divergence from tradition that must have raised a few Viennese eyebrows is the spectacular cadenza at the beginning of the movement that follows immediately on the fiery orchestral introduction and leads right into the main theme. Now, if these had been German or Hungarian dances, Vienna’s attitude might have been different.
From Lemminkäinen Suite, Op. 22 (Four Legends from Kalevala), II. The Swan of Tuonela
Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)
The Swan of Tuonela was composed originally as the prelude to Sibelius’ first attempt at opera, The Building of the Boat, but he aborted his own operatic career after experiencing Wagner’s music dramas at Bayreuth. He recast the prelude as the second of four tone poems, the Lemminkäinen Suite, with the score bearing the explanatory note: “Tuonela, land of death, surrounded by a broad river on whose black and rapidly flowing waters the Swan floats majestically, singing.”
The swan’s song featuring that most melancholy of all instruments, the English horn, is a non-metrical “vocalise” that floats on a lake of muted strings, together admirably portraying the desolation of the lake. The English horn shares its song with the solo cello and viola, whose range and timbre complement it.
The orchestral accompaniment is stunningly original; Sibelius calls for constant subdividing of the strings, and he darkens the orchestral sound by omitting flutes, trumpets and clarinets. Near the end, as the soaring strings introduce a fleeting ray of hope, the lone cello in its highest register closes on the dead residents of Tuonela.
Suite from L’Oiseau de feu, “The Firebird” (1919)
Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)
“He is a man on the eve of fame,” said Sergey Diaghilev, impresario of the famed Ballets Russes in Paris, during the rehearsals for Igor Stravinsky’s The Firebird.
In 1909 Stravinsky, viewed as a budding composer just emerging from the tutelage of Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, got what can be called his big break, thanks to the laziness of the composer Anatoly Lyadov. Early in the year Diaghilev had written Lyadov: “I am sending you a proposal. I need a ballet and a Russian one, since there is no such thing. There is Russian opera, Russian dance, Russian rhythm – but no Russian ballet. And that is precisely what I need to perform in May of the coming year in the Paris Grand Opera and in the huge Royal Drury Lane Theater in London… The libretto is ready…It was dreamed up by us all collectively. It is The Firebird – a ballet in one act and perhaps two scenes.” When Diaghilev heard that after three months Lyadov had only progressed so far as buying music manuscript paper, he withdrew the commission and offered it to Aleksander Glazunov and Nikolay Tcherepnin, who both turned him down. In desperation he turned to the unknown Stravinsky.
Stravinsky finished the score in May 1910, in time for the premiere on June 25. It was an instant success and has remained Stravinsky’s most frequently performed work. Its romantic tone, lush orchestral colors, imaginative use of instruments and exciting rhythms outdid even Stravinsky’s teacher, the Russian master of orchestration. It required an immense orchestra and the first suite Stravinsky extracted from the ballet in 1911 strained symphony orchestras’ resources. He made two subsequent revisions, with modified orchestration, the final one in 1945.
The ballet, taking its plot from bits of numerous Russian folk tales, tells the story of the heroic Tsarevich Ivan who, while wandering in an enchanted forest, encounters the magic firebird as it picks golden fruit from a silver tree. He traps the bird but, as a token of goodwill, frees it. As a reward, the bird gives Ivan a flaming magic feather. At dawn the Tsarevich finds himself in a park near the castle of the evil magician Kashchey. Thirteen beautiful maidens, captives of Kashchey, come out of the castle to play in the garden but one of them in particular, the beautiful Tsarevna, captures Ivan’s heart. As the sun rises, the maidens have to return to their prison and the Tsarevna warns Ivan not to come near the castle lest he fall under the magician’s spell as well. In spite of the warning, the Tsarevich follows and opens the gate of the castle. With a huge crash Kashchey and his retinue of monsters erupts from the castle in a wild dance, whose drive and clashing harmonies foreshadow The Rite of Spring. With the help of the magic feather the Tsarevich calls the Firebird who overcomes Kashchey and tames the monsters by lulling them to sleep. In the end the captives are freed from the spell and Tsarevich Ivan and the Tsarevna are married in a grand ceremony culminating in an apotheosis of the Firebird.
Program notes by: Joseph & Elizabeth Kahn www.wordprosmusic.com
William Hagen, Violin
William Hagen has performed as soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician across the United States, Europe, and Asia. In 2021, William makes his debuts with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at the Ravinia Festival and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe at the Rheingau Music Festival, and appears at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival.
As soloist, William has appeared with the Detroit Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, Seattle Symphony, and regularly appears as soloist at the Aspen Music Festival. In Europe, he has soloed with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony (HR Sinfonieorchester), the Vienna Radio Symphony (ORF Radio Sinfonieorchester Wien), and the major orchestras of Belgium, including the Brussels Philharmonic, National Orchestra of Belgium, and the Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège. William has also soloed in Japan with the Yokohama Sinfonietta and the Sendai Philharmonic.
As recitalist and chamber musician, William has performed at venues such as Wigmore Hall and the Louvre, and collaborated with artists such as Steven Isserlis, Gidon Kremer, Edgar Meyer, and Tabea Zimmerman, among others. He maintains an active schedule on both sides of the Atlantic, making frequent trips to Europe and cities around the US to play a wide range of repertoire.
In 2019, William released his debut album, “Danse Russe,” with his good friend and frequent collaborator, pianist Albert Cano Smit. The album is available on all streaming platforms.
A native of Salt Lake City, Utah, William began playing the violin at the age of 4, studying with Natalie Reed and then Deborah Moench. He studied with Itzhak Perlman and Catherine Cho at the Juilliard School, Christian Tetzlaff at the Kronberg Academy, and was a longtime student of Robert Lipsett, studying with Mr. Lipsett for 11 years both at the Colburn Community School of Performing Arts and at the Colburn Conservatory of Music. In 2015, William won 3rd prize at the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels.
William performs on the 1732 “Arkwright Lady Rebecca Sylvan” Antonio Stradivari, on generous loan from the Rachel Barton Pine Foundation.
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